Who let Plonq loose in the kitchen?

I've been hard at work out in the kitchen today, partly cleaning it up but mostly making some spaghetti sauce. My brother used to make the best sauce, and I'm trying to loosely emulate what he made. I call it Everything But The Kitchen Sink Sauce. The recipe is fairly simple.

Start with some ground meat (hamburger works, or you can use Italian sausage). While it sautees in olive oil, cut up and add some onion, peppers, mushrooms, olives and lots of fresh garlic. Simmer that all together for awhile. Add some more olive oil. Add some butter while you're at it. Butter makes everything taste good. Dump in a couple cans of tomato paste and splash in enough water so that you can stir it. Add red wine, olive oil and more butter until it's much runnier than you would like. Add various spices until it tastes about right.

Add some more garlic. [Are you daft? There's already six cloves in there!] [Shut up brain!] Taste it, and then add a bit more. If the sauce starts to cook down too much then add more red wine. Simmer for a few hours. Enjoy.

[edit]

Arr! T'is a fine sauce if I do say so me maties! T'will make a hearty addition to me spaghetti!

Tastes better than it looks.

Shiver me timbers, this was some fine grub!

We toyed with the moisture content of the pasta dough, and I think we got it right. I guess that the third time was the charm. I thought that it was too dry, and atara insisted that it was too moist. The noodles came out darn near perfect, so I guess we were both wrong. The sauce was as thick and rich and decadent as I'd hoped (simmering for 5 hours does nice things to a sauce).

Served with a merlot, of course.


Arrr! This be one fine plate of grub! I hereby dub it "Pasta au Plonq".

In retrospect I should have snapped a picture before I sprinkled ground parmesan on it.